D  F 

ZJ/ 
P4- 


GIFT  OF 


8061  '12  'NVr  IVd  ^^■ffJ'l 

'A    N   ^suDBaAt;;    ^^^  ■'''. 


31   1914 


HISTOEY 


BY 


BERNADOTTE  PERRIN,  Ph.D. 

LAMPSON  PKOFESSOR   OF  GREEK   LITERATURE   AND  HISTORY 
YALE    UNIVERSITY 


REPRINTED   FROM 

GREEK  LITERATURE 

Copyright,  1912 
By  the  COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


f' 


THE  COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 
1912 


\  \ 


/ 


28198a 


HISTORY 

When  Alexander  the  Great  crossed  into  Asia  on  his  long 
career  of  conquest,  he  took  a  trained  historian  with  him. 
He  was  conscious  of  making  history  of  which  men  after  him 
would  be  glad  to  read.  But  many  centuries  of  Greek  history 
found  no  recording  historians.  They  would  have  been  in- 
teresting to  us,  who  are  so  absorbed  in  origins  and  develop- 
ments, in  causahty  and  evolution,  in  ''historical  relativity,'' 
that  we  begrudge  oblivion  any  data  whatsoever.  But  they 
were  not  interesting  enough  to  contemporary  Greeks  to  find 
chroniclers.  Speaking  broadly,  it  always  required  some 
great  spectacular  struggle  —  the  Trojan  War,  the  Persian 
Wars,  the  Peloponnesian  War,  the  duel  between  Sparta  and 
Thebes,  the  Hellenic  conquest  of  Asia  —  to  elicit,  as  it  were, 
a  great  historian;  and  Homer,  Herodotus,  Thucydides, 
Xenophon,  and  Cleitarchus  are  the  canonical  names  corre- 
sponding to  these  spectacular  struggles.  There  are  others,  of 
course,  but  these  tower  above  all,  and  the  others  are  usually 
little  more  than  names  to  us.  Polybius  also  was  moved 
to  compose  his  great  work  by  the  transcendent  struggle 
tween  Rome  and  Carthage;  but  Polybius,  though  writing 
in  Greek,  had  become,  by  long  residence  in  Rome,  and  in- 
timate association  with  leading  Romans,  more  than  half 
Roman  in  spirit.  Not  forgetting  the  sensational  Duris  of 
Samos,  nor  the  learned  antiquarian  Timaeus  of  Taurome- 
nium,  we  may  say  that  distinctively  Greek  historiography 
ends  with  the  historians  of  Alexander's  career.  And  it  ends, 
as  it  begins,  with  a  triumph  of  fancy  and  invention  over  fact 
and  re-presentation.     In  the  middle  ground,  in  Thucydides 

152 


HISTORY  153 

and  Xenophon,  the  desire  to  inform  is  duly  enthroned  beside 
the  desire  to  please ;  but  the  (jrreek  hearer  or  reader  usually 
preferred  a  flight  of  the  imagination  to  a  statement  of  the 
truth,  and  the  sovereign  names  among  the  Greeks  them- 
selves were  Homer,  Herodotus,  Ephorus,  and  Cleitarchus, 
names  representing  a  body  of  highly  imaginative  and  mainly 
fictitious  poetry,  and  a  body  of  highly  imaginative  and  largely 
fictitious  prose. 

Well  on  into  that  greatest  century  of  Greek  hfe  and  thought 
which  began  five  hundred  years  before  Christ,  the  Homeric 
poems,  and  especially  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey ,  were  regarded 
by  most  Greeks  as  authentic  history.  Achilles,  Agamemnon, 
Andromache,  Odysseus,  Laertes,  and  Penelope  had  actually 
and  in  very  person  fought,  ruled,  suffered,  wandered,  grieved, 
and  been  steadfast  to  the  end,  even  as  they  are  there  de- 
scribed. Thersites  had  railed  at  the  Atreidae,  Diomedes 
had  wounded  Aphrodite,  Hector  had  slain  Patroclus,  Achil- 
les had  slain  Hector,  and  aged  Priam  had  ransomed  the 
dead  body  of  his  son,  even  as  we  now  read  in  the  Iliad. 
Ilios,  the  proud  city  of  the  Troad,  commanding  the  Helles- 
pont and  the  Euxine  Sea,  had  been  captured  and  sacked  by 
the  leagued  hosts  of  the  Lord  of  Mycenae,  a  city  which 
dominated  Peloponnesus,  and  the  hosts  had  met  with 
various  dooms  on  their  various  ways  home.  All  this 
had  long  been  history  to  the  Greeks,  just  as  the  book  of 
Genesis  has  long  been  history  to  Christian  peoples.  Skep- 
ticism, doubt,  and  denial  met  with  the  same  scornful  re- 
proaches in  the  first  case  which  they  have  evoked  in  the  second. 
We  now  know  —  at  least  Professor  Murray,  and  those  who 
think  approximately  as  he  does,  know  —  that  the  Iliad  and 
Odyssey  are  traditional  race-poems,^  slowly  evolved  through 
the  centuries  which  saw  tribes  of  hardy  Northerners  sweep 
gradually  down  into  the  Aegean  basin  and  appropriate  by 
conquest  and  assimilation  the  rich  culture  existing  there. 

I  Gilbert  Murray,  The  Rise  of  the  Greek  Epic,  2d  ed., Oxford,  1911. 


154  GREEK  LITERATURE 

The  ruins  which  amaze  the  discoverer  at  Troy,  Cnossus, 
Mycenae,  and  Orchomenus  speak  impressively  of  the  power 
and  splendor  of  that  submerged  culture. 

The  invaders  were  a  song-folk.  They  sang  because  they 
had  to  sing.  They  sang  of  the  achievements  and  adventures 
of  their  gods  and  heroes.  One  generation  of  them  would  be- 
come heroes  and  demigods  to  the  next  generation,  and  that 
generation  to  the  next,  and  each  sang  of  the  prowess  of  the 
past.  A  traditional  poesy  arose,  shot  through  with  "& 
fiery  intensity  of  imagination,"  and  served  by  a  language 
*'more  gorgeous  than  Milton's,  yet  as  simple  and  direct  as 
that  of  Burns."  Into  the  crucible  of  this  traditional  poesy 
were  poured  for  centuries  the  migrations  and  conquests  of 
tribes;  the  oversea  expeditions  of  thalassocratic  cities; 
racial  myths  and  legends.  Into  the  crucible  went  also  the 
absolute  fictions  of  a  powerfully  creative  imagination  labor- 
ing at  high  pressure  to  supply  a  keen  demand.  The  centre 
of  poetic  activity  shifted  from  the  European  to  the  Asiatic 
side  of  the  Aegean,  and  from  Aeolians  to  lonians.  Guilds 
of  poets  flourished  in  the  chief  Ionian  cities,  who  slowly 
fashioned  the  molten  material  from  the  great  crucible  of  epic 
poesy  into  the  definite  structures  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey, 
and  then  went  on  to  complete  in  later  compositions  the  epic 
cycle  which  the  elder  epics  logically  and  chronologically 
demanded.  If  material  was  lacking,  the  gap  was  filled  by 
fresh  creation  until  the  cycle  was  complete,  and  then  the  epic 
impulse  slowly  died.  These  later  epics,  ascribed  to  indi- 
vidual and  historical  poets,  have  perished.  But  the  central 
poems  around  which  they  had  been  made  to  cluster  assumed 
canonical  form  for  use  in  national  religious  festivals,  and 
finally  passed,  with  all  the  other  rich  fruits  of  Ionian  culture, 
across  the  sea  again,  flying  before  the  conquering  power  of 
Persia,  to  Ionian  Athens.  There  they  found  the  patronage 
of  a  rich  tyrant's  briUiant  court,  and  there  they  were  learnedly 
and  skilfully  edited  into  substantially  the  shape  in  which  they 


HISTORY  155 

have  come  down  to  us.  At  national  religious  festivals  they 
were  recognized  as  national  rehgious  poems,  and  as  national 
history.  The  mythical,  legendary,  and  purely  fictitious 
accretions  in  them  were  seldom  distinguished  from  the  genu- 
inely historical  nuclei.  They  were  thought  to  be  the  work 
of  one  man,  a  divine  Homer.  And  yet  they  actually  '' rep- 
resent not  the  independent  invention  of  one  man,  but  the 
ever  moving  tradition  of  many  generations  of  men.  They 
are  wholes  built  up  out  of  a  great  mass  of  legendary  poetry, 
re-treated  and  re-created  by  successive  poets  in  successive 
ages,  the  histories  knitted  together  and  made  more  interest- 
ing to  an  audience  by  the  instinctive  processes  of  fiction.''  ^ 

When  'Omer  smote  'is  bloomin'  lyre, 
He'd  'eard  men  sing  by  land  and  sea ; 
An'  what  he  thought  'e  might  require, 
'E  went  and  took  —  the  same  as  me  ! 

Multiply  KipHng's  bhthe  ''  'Omer  "  many  times,  and  dis- 
tribute him  through  five  or  six  centuries,  and  you  have  the 
Homer  of  Professor  Murray,  my  Homer,  your  Homer  — 
perhaps. 

But  besides  the  Homeric  poems,  Ionia  also  produced  a 
scientific  spirit,  which  looked  out  on  life  observantly,  and 
drew  inferences  from  it  which  were  fatal  to  a  belief  in  the 
truth  of  those  poems.  It  is  characteristic  of  this  period  of 
scientific  inquiry,  as  Professor  Bury  has  remarked,^  that 
sages  take  the  place  of  heroes  in  popular  fancy,  or,  at  least, 
take  a  place  beside  them,  and  we  have  the  myths  of  the  Seven 
Wise  Men.  Qreat  historical  personages  also  loom  up  from 
the  near  past,  like  Polycrates,  Periander,  and  Croesus,  about 
whom  fiction  weaves  its  fascinating  web.  The  advance  of  the 
Persian  power  from  the  Orient  to  the  Aegean,  and  its  spec- 
tacular conquests  of  the  Lydian  dynasty  first  and  then  of  the 

1  Murray,  op.  cit.,  p.  154.     (2d  ed.,  p.  189.) 

2  J.  B.  Bury,  The  Ancient  Greek  Historians,  New  York,  1909. 


156  GREEK  LITERATURE 

Asiatic  Greeks,  made  near  and  current  events  even  more 
attractive  to  the  Greek  fancy  than  what  were  supposed  to 
be  the  real  events  of  the  Homeric  poems,  or  what  the  new 
scientific  spirit  denounced  as  the  falsehoods  of  those  poems. 
Truth,  for  a  season  at  least,  became  stranger  and  more 
fascinating  than  fiction.  The  geography  and  peoples  of  the 
Orient  were  brought  home  to  the  Greek  fancy  by  Hecataeus  ; 
the  story  of  that  all-conquering  folk,  the  Persians,  by  Xanthus 
the  Lydian  and  Dionysius  of  Miletus.  That  story  soon  in- 
cluded the  invasions  of  Europe  by  Darius  and  Xerxes,  and 
the  splendor  of  the  story,  even  without  the  exaggerations 
which  the  lively  Greek  fancy  was  sure  to  give  it,  made  the 
undertakings  and  achievements  of  the  heroic  age  far  less  im- 
pressive than  they  had  been.  In  time,  Thucydides  could 
allude  to  them  with  something  of  scorn.  To  put  it  briefly, 
the  new  critical  spirit  brought  the  truth  of  the  Greeks'  An- 
cient History,  as  it  was  presented  in  the  Homeric  poems,  into 
doubt  and  disbelief,  and  the  Modern  History  of  the  Greeks 
became  so  fascinating  that  it  absorbed  the  active  imagination 
of  the  race. 

But  the  Ancient  History  of  the  Greeks  never  emancipated 
itself  wholly  from  the  influence  of  the  epic  poems.  The  re- 
volt against  it  which  we  see  in  the  chronological  and  didactic 
poems  of  Hesiod,  poems  which  were  to  tell  men  the  truth  in 
contrast  to  the  falsehoods  of  Homer,  is  still  expressed  in  the 
same  hexameter  verse.  And  even  the  later  mythographers, 
or  logographers,  such  as  Acusilaus,  who  retold  the  epic  legends 
in  prose,  merely  lifted  the  myths  to  a  slightly  higher  level  of 
credibility  by  naive  rationalistic  processes.  The  myths  were 
not  rejected,  nor  even  approximately  reduced  to  their  his- 
torical meanings.  The  earliest  rulers  among  men  were  still 
directly  descended  from  gods,  and  a  clumsy  chronology  by 
successive  generations  was  made  to  show  the  connection  of 
the  great  families  of  the  present  with  these  early  demigods. 
Even  Hellanicus,  who  established  the  first  annual  system  of 


HISTORY  157 

chronology  for  current  events,  and  tabulated  those  of  so 
late  a  period  as  the  close  of  the  Peloponnesian  War,  incor- 
porated into  his  Attic  History,  to  which  Thucydides  alludes, 
this  clumsy  fabric  of  Ancient  History.  It  is  Thucydides  who 
first  cuts  adrift  from  it.  And  this  gives  us  the  succession  of 
writers  who  sought  by  what  they  wrote  to  inform  rather  than 
to  please ;  to  tell  the  truth,  to  tell  of  what  really  was,  rather 
than  of  what  never  was :  Hesiod,  Acusilaus,  Hellanicus, 
Thucydides,  all  devoted  to  fact  more  than  to  form.  Each 
in  turn,  it  is  true,  accuses  his  predecessor  of  falsehood,  Hesiod 
Homer,  Acusilaus  Hesiod,  and  so  on  down  the  line.  This  is 
one  of  the  curious  amenities  of  Greek  historiography.^  But 
each  is  honestly  in  quest  of  the  truth  rather  than  of  a  pleas- 
ing form  of  the  truth  at  the  expense,  it  may  be,  of  the  truth. 
And  Hellanicus  attains  his  quest  with  a  tabulation  of  the 
chief  events  in  contemporary  Greek  history,  first  as  they 
are  related  to  the  years  of  the  priestesses  of  Hera  in  the  temple 
at  Argos,  and  then,  after  these  sacred  records  had  perished 
in  the  destruction  of  the  temple  by  fire,  as  they  are  related 
to  the  annual  archons  of  Athens,  now  an  imperial  Greek  city.^ 
His  work  was  an  ''annals,"  in  the  strictest  sense,  and  could 
have  had  no  particular  unity  —  no  plan,  culmination,  or 
conclusion.  It  afforded  not  only  no  room  for  play  of  fancy, 
but  none  either  for  any  artistic  impulses.  It  was  a  catalogue 
of  events  by  years  of  Athenian  archons. 

But  meanwhile  the  really  colossal  events  and  personages 
of  the  Persian  Wars,  after  being  more  or  less  fully  recorded 
from  the  standpoint  of  Asiatic  Greeks  by  Charon  of  Lamp- 
sacus,  Xanthus  the  Lydian,  Dionysius,  and  Hecataeus  of  Mile- 
tus, had  also  been  committed  to  the  processes  of  oral  tradi- 
tion, among  a  people  of  the  liveliest  fancy,  from  whom  had 
come,  by  slow  evolution,  two  of  the  greatest  imaginative 
poems  which  the  world  has  known.     The  wonders  of  Egypt 

1  American  Journal  of  Philology,  XVIII  (1897),  pp.  255-274. 

2  American  Journal  of  Philology,  XXII  (1901;,  pp.  39-43. 


158  GREEK   LITERATURE 

and  Assyria,  the  marvels  of  India  and  Arabia,  the  mysteries 
of  Upper  Asia  and  Scythia,  had  been  brought  by  travellers 
and  merchants  within  the  reach  and  play  of  the  lively  Hellenic 
fancy.  Wonderful  facts  and  wondering  fancy  had  ministered 
to  each  other  for  more  than  half  a  century,  during  which  time 
a  great  Athenian  empire  had  arisen,  and  the  Age  of  Pericles 
had  begun.  Books  were  rare,  but  tales  were  rife,  and  there 
were  professional  tellers  of  prose  tales  as  well  as  professional 
reciters  of  epic  song.  Written  and  oral  material  of  tradition 
together  made  a  thesaurus  of  fact  and  fancy  before  whose 
glowing  charm  even  the  epic  cycle  paled,  and  these  bewilder- 
ing treasures  were  reduced  to  splendid  literary  form  by  him 
who  is  called  the  ''Father  of  History,"  Herodotus. 

Though  born  in  Dorian  Halicarnassus,  and  long  resident 
in  Ionian  Samos  and  the  Pan-Hellenic  Thurii  of  Magna 
Graecia ;  though  a  traveller  in  all  the  parts  of  Asia,  Africa, 
and  Europe  where  Hellenes  came  into  touch  with  Barbarians, 
Athens  was  his  spiritual  home,  the  Athens  of  Pericles.  Here 
his  immortal  work,  the  materials  for  which  had  been  slowly 
accumulating  during  more  than  thirty  years  of  the  most 
kaleidoscopic  experience,  was  given  at  last  the  form  in  which 
it  has  come  down  to  us.  It  was  edited  and  published,  as 
we  should  say,  during  the  first  decade  of  the  Peloponnesian 
War,  in  Athens,  probably,  and  for  Athenians  —  at  least  in 
fullest  sympathy  with  the  imperial  ambitions  of  Athens. 
It  gives  high  artistic  form  to  the  reigning  beliefs  of  the  Peri- 
clean  party  at  Athens  concerning  the  Persian  Wars,  two 
generations  of  men  after  the  wars  were  fought,  and  one 
generation  after  the  greatest  hero  of  those  wars,  Themistocles, 
had  died.  Meanwhile  the  oral  tradition  of  those  wars  — 
and  the  literary  tradition  was  annalistic  and  meagre  —  had 
suffered  the  changes  to  which  all  oral  tradition  is  naturally 
liable,  and,  besides,  had  been  directly  influenced  by  an 
entirely  new  set  of  loves  and  hates  and  jealousies  arising  from 
the  growth  of  the  Athenian  empire  and  the  outbreak  of  the 


HISTORY  159 

Peloponnesian  War.  These  tended  to  distort  and  pervert 
the  stories  of  services  to  the  national  cause  rendered  by- 
states  now  in  hostile  relations  with  Athens,  and  to  glorify 
the  services  of  Athens.  So  far  as  Herodotus  writes  history, 
he  writes  it  as  a  defender  of  Athens  and  the  Periclean  pohcies 
which  had  led  to  the  Peloponnesian  War.  He  belittles  the 
Ionian  Greeks  of  Asia  and  their  heroic  but  ineffectual  struggle 
for  freedom;  he  treats  Sparta  with  ironical  depreciation; 
Corinth,  Aegina,  and  Thebes  with  contemptuous  hate; 
Argos  and  Macedonia,  with  whom  Athens  hopes  yet  to  come 
into  alliance,  with  tender  respect.  He  does  this,  as  Professor 
Bury  says  {op.  cit,  p.  65),  as  ''a  historian  who  cannot  help 
being  partial,''  rather  than  as  ''a  partisan  who  becomes  a 
historian  for  the  sake  of  his  cause."  And  he  does  it  at  a  time 
when,  as  Thucydides  says  (ii,  8,  fin.,  Jowett's  translation), 
'Hhe  feeling  of  mankind  was  strongly  on  the  side  of  the  Lace- 
daemonians, and  the  general  indignation  against  the  Athenians 
was  intense."  We  cannot  take  the  word  of  Herodotus  in 
explanation  of  Sparta's  defense  of  Thermopylae,  or  of  the 
stratagem  of  Themistocles  at  Salamis,  or  of  the  tactics  of 
Pausanias  at  Plataea,  although  what  he  says  enables  us  to 
penetrate  to  the  truth  in  these  matters.  For  he  mirrors  the 
sentiments  of  the  community  in  the  midst  of  which  he  writes. 
And  this  is  his  precise  worth  as  a  historian.  We  know 
through  him  what  Periclean  Athens  hked  to  think  and  feel 
on  these  and  other  points. 

^*So  far  as  Herodotus  writes  history,"  was  said  above; 
for  that  is  the  least  of  what  he  does.  He  is  a  collector,  on 
a  vast  scale,  of  historical  material,  and  an  incomparable 
artist  in  reducing  this  heterogeneous  material  to  coherent 
and  attractive  literary  form  in  an  age  when  the  footnote  was 
unknown.  Geographical,  ethnological,  mythological,  genea- 
logical, legendary,  political,  mihtary,  literary,  economic, 
architectural,  and  religious  data,  in  both  genuine  and  fictitious 
sort,  have  been  strung  by  him   in   bewildering   profusion 


160  GREEK   LITERATURE 

along  one  continuous  thread — the  strife  between  Hellenes 
and  Barbarians  from  earliest  times  down  to  the  capture  of 
Sestos  by  the  Athenians  in  479.  This  greater  theme,  which 
gives  his  work  the  character  of  a  universal  history,  was  prob- 
ably suggested  to  him  by  the  narrower  theme  of  Xerxes' 
invasion  of  Europe ;  after  he  had  treated  this,  he  probably 
elaborated  the  larger  subject.  This  narrower  theme  occupies 
the  third  triad  of  the  nine  books  into  which  his  history  has 
been  conveniently  divided  —  books  VII,  VIII,  and  IX  — 
and  I  am  willing  to  admit,  with  Mr.  Macan,^  though  I  do 
not  think  the  argument  for  it  can  ever  be  made  perfectly 
convincing,  that  these  three  books  were  'Hhe  earliest  portion, 
or  section,  of  the  work  to  attain  relative  completeness  and 
definite  form."  They  certainly  constitute  a  distinct  whole 
by  themselves,  progressively  climactic  in  the  stories  of  Ther- 
mopylae, Salamis,  and  Plataea,  and  they  lend  themselves  to 
subdivision  far  less  than  the  first  six,  or  the  first  two  triads 
of  books.  Mr.  Macan  well  says  that  *'no  other  equal  portion 
of  the  work  of  Herodotus  exhibits  so  remarkable  a  coherence, 
continuity,  and  freedom  from  digression,  interruption,  or 
asides  as  this  the  third  and  last  volume,  or  trio,  of  books." 

In  all  the  books,  but  especially  in  the  last  three,  Herodotus 
is  not  a  historian  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term  —  not  as 
Hellanicus  and  Thucydides  are  historians.  He  does  not 
seek  by  investigation  to  sift  the  true  from  the  false  and  tell 
for  all  subsequent  time  what  actually  happened.  He  rather 
seeks  to  cast  the  vast  material  which  he  has  collected  on  the 
narrower  theme  of  Xerxes'  invasion  and  the  larger  theme  of 
the  strifes  between  Hellene  and  Barbarian  into  such  shape 
as  is  prescribed  by  the  canons  of  epic  and  dramatic  poetry, 
the  two  regnant  forms  of  literary  art,  but  to  do  this  in  prose. 
He  is  the  prose  Homer,  and  to  some  extent  the  prose  Aeschy- 
lus, of  the  thesaurus  of  fact  and  fancy  constituted  by  the  oral 
and  written  tradition  of  what  was  to  him  modern  and  recent, 

1  R.  W.  Macan,  Herodotus,  Books  VII-IX,  London,  1908. 


HISTORY  161 

as  contrasted  with  ancient  and  mythical  time.  His  was  the 
genius  first  to  perceive  that  modern  history  in  prose  was 
capable  of  epic  and  dramatic  treatment,  especially  of  epic 
treatment.  Comprehensive  discursiveness  is  the  breath  of 
his  nostrils.  The  tales  which  Hellenes  and  Barbarians  have 
told  with  or  without  pertinency,  the  marvels  they  have  seen, 
the  divine  judgments  they  have  illustrated,  the  wealth  they 
have  amassed,  the  crimes  they  have  committed,  their  in- 
trigues, loves,  hates,  and  sorrows  —  these  and  more  than 
these  are  welcome  to  Herodotus,  and  if  he  does  not  find  them 
in  sufficient  abundance,  then  like  a  true  Homeric  poet  he 
invents  or  adapts  to  suit  himself.  It  is  often  hard  to  distin- 
guish what  he  invents  from  what  he  merely  accepts,  and  it 
often  matters  little,  acceptance  or  invention  being  alike 
heinous  from  the  standpoint  of  the  true  historian.  Credulity 
alternates  in  his  work  with  reserve,  and  both  are  often  childish. 
He  has  lost  his  faith  in  the  gods  and  heroes  of  Homer,  for  he 
has  travelled  in  Egypt ;  but  he  has  the  most  implicit  con- 
fidence in  oracles,  and  often  warps  his  story  to  prove  fulfil- 
ment of  them.  He  borrows  largely  from  a  predecessor  like 
Hecataeus,  and  pays  him  no  thanks  but  ridicule.  Andrew 
Lang's  priest  in  the  City  of  the  Ford  of  the  Ox,  who  called 
Herodotus  in  the  tongue  of  the  Arabians  ''The  Father  of 
Liars,"  said  that  he  ''was  chiefly  concerned  to  steal  the  lore 
of  those  who  came  before  him,  such  as  Hecataeus,  and  then 
to  escape  notice  as  having  stolen  it."  But  all  this  simply 
emphasizes  anew  the  fact  that  Herodotus  was  the  prose 
Homer  of  the  Persian  Wars.  Like  Homer,  he  charmed  his 
hearers  and  will  always  charm  his  readers.  It  was  this 
charm  which  Thucydides  could  not  forgive  him.  But  Thu- 
cydides  despised  Homer.  Those  who  do  not  despise  Homer, 
but  are  edified  by  the  play  of  fancy  about  fact,  will  agree  with 
what  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus  says  about  Herodotus 
(Epist,  ad  Pomp.,  3,  cited  by  Bury,  p.  42) :  "Herodotus  knew 
that  every  narrative  of  great  length  wearies  the  ear  of  the 


162  GREEK  LITERATURE 

hearer,  if  it  dwell  without  a  break  on  the  same  subject ;  but, 
if  pauses  are  introduced  at  intervals,  it  affects  the  mind 
agreeably.  And  so  he  desired  to  lend  variety  to  his  work 
and  imitated  Homer.  If  we  take  up  his  book,  we  admire  it 
to  the  last  syllable,  and  always  want  more." 

But  it  is  a  Hterary,  not  a  scientific,  enjoyment  which  He- 
rodotus affords  us.  We  know  that  the  panorama  of  the  peo- 
ples and  tribes  of  three  continents  which  he  unrolls  for  us 
is  colored  by  the  fancy  of  the  Greeks.  Greek  ideas  and  re- 
flections are  transferred  to  an  Oriental  or  Barbarian  setting. 
We  can  hardly  find  in  Herodotus  what  Assyria,  Babylonia, 
Lydia,  Libya,  Scythia,  and  Egypt  really  were  in  the  sixth 
century  b.c,  but  rather  how  they  mirrored  themselves  in  the 
Greek  imagination.  It  is  as  though  we  had  to  reconstruct 
for  ourselves  a  mountain  range  from  its  distorted  reflections 
in  the  bosom  of  a  lake.  In  this  case,  however,  the  distorted 
reflection  has  been  brought  into  natural  perspective  for  us 
by  one  of  the  greatest  literary  artists  of  the  race.  He  had 
the  genius  to  see,  what  is  so  easy  for  us  now  to  see,  that 
Salamis  and  Plataea  were  points  towards  which  all  previous 
Mediterranean  history  converged,  and  from  which  all  sub- 
sequent Mediterranean  history  must  diverge.  To  have  had 
this  vision  first,  estabhshes  his  right  to  be  called  ''The  Father 
of  History." 

It  was  the  attempt  of  the  Oriental  Persian  Empire  to  con- 
quer the  Aegean  basin  which  engaged  the  Homeric  genius  of 
Herodotus;  Thucydides  depicts  the  struggle  of  Athens  to 
maintain  her  empire  of  this  Aegean  basin,  and  he  does  it  as 
a  contemporary  and  participant.  An  imperial  democracy 
was  a  new  thing  in  the  world's  experience,  as  was  also  the 
historical  treatment  of  contemporary  events.  Current 
events  had  been  chronicled  in  time-relations  merely  by 
Hellanicus,  but  Thucydides  was  the  first  to  apply  to  them 
the  laws  of  cause  and  effect,  and,  whatever  his  excellences 
or  defects,  he  was  the  founder  of  historical  science  as  we  now 


HISTORY  163 

understand  it,  the  creator  of  historical  criticism,  the  discoverer 
of  its  laws,  and  the  first  teacher  of  the  art  of  writing  history. 
He  whom  many  hold  to  be  the  greatest  modern  historian  of 
antiquity,  Eduard  Meyer,  calls  him  the  incomparable  and 
unequalled  teacher  of  this  art,  but  there  are  strong  voices 
of  dissent  from  such  high  praise.  Those  who  dissent  often 
fail  to  consider  sufficiently  the  exceedingly  narrow  Hmits 
which  Thucydides  imposed  upon  himself;  and  those  who 
agree  with  and  echo  the  praise  are  often  bhnd  to  the  inade- 
quacies of  Thucydides,  even  within  his  self-imposed  Hmits. 
Professor  Bury,  in  his  Harvard  Lectures,  seems  to  draw  the 
lines  with  dignity  and  justice. 

*' Thucydides,  an  Athenian,"  so  begins  the  work,  ''wrote 
the  history  of  the  war  in  which  the  Peloponnesians  and 
Athenians  fought  against  one  another.  He  began  to  write 
when  they  first  took  up  arms,  beheving  that  it  would  be  great 
and  memorable  above  any  previous  war.  For  he  argued 
that  both  states  were  then  at  the  full  height  of  their  military 
power,  and  he  saw  the  rest  of  the  Hellenes  either  siding  or 
intending  to  side  with  one  or  the  other  of  them.  No  move- 
ment ever  stirred  Hellas  more  deeply  than  this;  it  was 
shared  by  many  of  the  barbarians,  and  might  be  said  even  to 
affect  the  world  at  large."  He  began  to  write,  that  is,  when 
it  broke  out,  the  history  of  a  great  war,  not  a  history  of  Athens 
or  of  the  Peloponnesian  states;  not  a  history  of  Hellenic 
culture  or  of  Athenian  democracy ;  not  a  description  of  un- 
known countries,  except  as  absolutely  necessary,  or  of  un- 
known peoples  and  customs;  not  personal  descriptions  or 
anecdotes  of  private  fife  —  Ion  of  Chios  and  Stesimbrotus 
of  Thasos  could  do  that  —  but  a  war-history.  And  even 
in  writing  a  war-history  his  aim  would  not  be  to  please  and 
entertain,  as  Herodotus  did,  but  to  instruct.  ''If  he  who 
desires  to  have  before  his  eyes  a  true  picture  of  the  events 
which  have  happened,  and  of  the  Hke  events  which  may  be 
expected  to  happen  hereafter  in  the  order  of  human  things, 


164  GREEK  LITERATURE 

shall  pronounce  what  I  have  written  to  be  useful,  then  I  shall 
be  satisfied.  My  history  is  an  everlasting  possession,  not 
a  prize  composition  which  is  heard  and  forgotten/' 

Who  is  it  that  speaks  with  this  new  note  of  self-repression 
and  utihtarian  purpose  ?  A  man  who,  at  the  time  of  which 
he  speaks,  was  about  thirty-five  years  old,  a  citizen  of  Athens, 
who  belonged  by  descent  to  a  princely  family  of  Thrace,  as 
Cimon  had,  and  still  possessed  rich  estates  in  that  country. 
He  was  highly  educated  after  the  manner  of  the  best  Sophists, 
and  doubtless  found  Anaxagoras  an  intellectual  father,  as 
Pericles  did.  He  was  emancipated  from  the  undue  authority 
of  tradition  and  custom,  and  given  to  logical  analysis  and 
criticism.  His  intellectual  processes,  that  is,  were  distinctly 
modern.  That  he  took  active  part  in  public  life  before  the 
year  424  B.C.,  may  be  safely  inferred  from  the  fact  that  in 
that  year  he  was  made  one  of  the  ten  Strategi,  whose  office 
was  the  highest  under  the  Empire.  Assigned  to  command 
on  the  coast  of  Thrace,  he  failed  to  prevent  Brasidas  from 
capturing  AmphipoHs,  the  northern  jewel  of  the  Empire,  and 
was  in  consequence  banished  on  pain  of  death.  His  pur- 
pose to  write  a  history  of  the  war,  however,  was  not  thwarted 
by  this  misfortune.  Indeed,  it  may  rather  be  inferred  that  he 
had  now  the  leisure,  as  he  had  always  had  the  means  and  the 
disposition,  to  continue  the  history  which  he  had  begun  at 
the  outbreak  of  hostihties  in  431.  ''The  same  Thucydides 
of  Athens,"  he  writes  in  V,  26,  ''continued  the  history  up  to 
the  destruction  of  the  Athenian  Empire.  For  twenty  years 
I  was  banished  from  my  country  after  I  held  the  command 
at  AmphipoHs,  and  associating  with  both  sides,  with  the 
Peloponnesians  quite  as  much  as  with  the  Athenians,  be- 
cause of  my  exile,  I  was  thus  enabled  to  watch  quietly  the 
course  of  events,  and  I  took  great  pains  to  make  out  the  exact 
truth."  It  is  safe  inference  that  this  banished  Athenian  spent 
much  time  on  his  estates  in  Thrace,  and  that  he  travelled 
much,  where  it  was  allowed  him  to  travel,  in  the  prosecution 


HISTORY  165 

of  his  inquiries.  He  returned  to  Athens  in  404,  after  the 
war  was  over,  and  began  to  put  his  material  into  final  form. 
Eight  years,  perhaps,  were  employed  in  this  task,  when  death 
overtook  him,  before  its  completion.  His  work,  unlike  that 
of  Herodotus,  is  therefore  a  fragment.  Seven  of  the  twenty- 
seven  years  during  which  the  Athenian  Empire  was  fighting 
to  maintain  itself  find  no  record  in  what  has  come  down  to 
us  from  Thucydides,  and  the  last  of  the  eight  books  into 
which  the  extant  material  has  been  judiciously  divided  by 
ancient  critics  plainly  lacks  the  author's  final  revision.  But 
three  distinct  manners  are  plainly  to  be  seen  in  what  we  have 
of  the  work  —  a  philosophic  manner,  as  in  the  first  book ; 
an  annalistic  manner,  as  in  books  two,  three,  four,  and  five 
(resumed  again  in  the  incomplete  eighth  book) ;  and  an 
episodic  manner,  as  in  the  story  of  the  campaign  at  Pylos 
and  Sphacteria,  of  the  siege  of  Plataea,  or  the  major  story 
of  the  Sicilian  expedition.  All  three  manners  are  alike  char- 
acterized by  a  dramatic  method  which  projects  events  and 
persons  as  it  were  upon  a  stage,  and  leaves  them  to  act  out 
there  the  Fall  of  the  Athenian  Empire.  Apparently,  but 
only  in  appearance,  the  author  pronounces  few  judgments 
on  men  and  events,  leaving  them  for  the  judgment  of  his 
readers.  His  detachment,  in  all  three  manners,  has  certainly 
never  been  surpassed.  An  oligarch  in  poHtical  convictions, 
to  whom  an  extreme  democracy  was  '^ manifest  folly,"  he 
yet  gives  us  a  sympathetic  and  spirited  picture  of  the  Athenian 
democracy  under  Pericles,  in  which  inherent  weaknesses  are 
not  suffered  to  obscure  pure  and  lofty  ideals.  An  Athenian 
to  the  core,  he  never  belittles  Spartan  nobility  and  greatness, 
but  gives  us  in  his  portrait  of  Brasidas  a  character  hardly 
second  to  that  of  Pericles.  An  admirer  of  the  Athenian 
Empire,  a  participant  in  its  honors,  and  stimulated  to  hterary 
activity  by  its  splendor,  as  Herodotus  had  been  by  that  of 
the  Persian  Empire,  he  uncovers  with  relentless  hand  the 
greed  and  cruelty  which  marked  its  growth,  cuhnination,  and 


166  GREEK  LITERATURE 

decline.  In  historical  philosophy  our  best  modern  historians 
may  well  surpass  him,  especially  as  the  appreciation  of  eco- 
nomic laws  is  a  modern  acquisition.  But  in  episodic  power, 
and,  above  all,  in  personal  detachment  from  the  characters 
and  events  of  his  story,  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  he 
remains  unsurpassed. 

The  philosophic  manner  of  Thucydides  may  be  best  illus- 
trated by  a  brief  outline  of  the  general  introduction  to  his 
narrative  of  the  war  formed  by  his  first  book,  which  was 
clearly  written  after  the  war  was  over,  i.e.  after  404  b.c. 

A  brief  prooemium  emphasizes  the  greatness  of  his  theme. 
The  empire  of  the  Hellenic  world  was  at  stake.  The  earher 
history  of  this  Hellenic  world  is  rapidly  reviewed  in  the  clear 
light  of  reason,  which  uncovers  the  falsity  of  legend  and 
romantic  oral  tradition,  and  a  new  standard  is  set  for  the  treat- 
ment of  ancient  and  recent  history.  Coming  to  the  treat- 
ment of  contemporary  and  current  history  —  a  new  art 
entirely — he  says :  ''Of  the  events  of  the  war  I  have  not  ven- 
tured to  speak  from  any  chance  information,  nor  according 
to  any  notion  of  my  own;  I  have  described  nothing  but 
what  I  either  saw  myself,  or  learned  from  others  of  whom  I 
made  the  most  particular  inquiry"  (i,  22,  2).  He  catches 
oral  tradition,  therefore,  in  the  making,  and  not,  as  Herodo- 
tus did,  after  a  generation  or  two  of  romantic  expansion  or 
partisan  distortion.  The  war  which  he  is  to  describe  had 
a  deep,  underlying  general  cause  —  the  growth  of  the 
Athenian  Empire  into  formidable  dimensions ;  and  also  im- 
mediate and  special  occasions,  such  as  the  Athenian  alliance 
with  Corcyra  and  the  siege  of  Potidaea.  Both  the  immediate 
occasions  and  the  general  cause  are  treated  at  length,  and 
then  more  briefly  the  various  diplomatic  steps  which  preceded 
the  actual  declaration  of  war  by  Sparta  and  her  Peloponne- 
sian  confederacy.  This  is  a  philosophical  method,  and, 
though  new  in  the  world  then,  it  can  hardly  be  improved 
upon  now.     Various  economic  relations  may  be  brought  into 


HISTORY  167 

prominence  in  setting  forth  the  general  underlying  cause  of 
the  war,  as  Mr.  Cornford  has  lately  so  well  done/  but,  re- 
membering that  economic  science  is  a  development  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  historical  students  may  well  rest  satisfied 
with  the  elaborate  introduction  of  Thucydides.  Contrast 
the  semi-playful  tone  with  which  Herodotus  introduces  his 
story  of  the  Persian  Wars.  Some  Phoenicians  carried  off 
lo  from  Argos,  and  in  retaliation  some  Greeks  carried  off 
Europa  from  Phoenicia.  "Bearing  these  things  in  mind," 
Alexander  the  son  of  Priam  carried  off  Helen,  and  the  Greeks 
were  fools  enough,  according  to  the  Persian  view,  to  make 
a  fuss  about  it  and  lead  an  army  into  Asia.  Hence  the  enmity 
of  the  Persians.  It  is  true  that  as  regards  the  initial  outrage 
of  the  series  the  Phoenicians  claim  that  lo  was  no  better  than 
she  should  have  been,  and  followed  them  of  her  own  free  will. 
"Which  of  these  two  accounts  is  true,"  says  Herodotus  (i,  5, 
RawHnson's  translation),  "I  shall  not  trouble  to  decide. 
I  shall  proceed  at  once  to  point  out  the  person  who  first 
within  my  knowledge  commenced  aggressions  on  the  Greeks, 
after  which  I  shall  go  forward  with  my  history."  The  differ- 
ence between  the  artistic  story-teller  and  the  philosophical 
historian   could   not   be  made   plainer. 

The  annahstic  manner  of  Thucydides  is  often  dry  and 
tedious.  But  it  is  certain  that  even  this  manner  is  an  ad- 
vance upon  its  greatest  exponent  hitherto,  namely  Hellanicus ; 
and  the  fact  that  Thucydides  was  obhged  to  establish  his  own 
system  of  chronology  makes  us  charitable.  It  is  easy  for  us, 
with  our  perfected  calendar,  to  fix  with  precision  the  temporal 
relations  of  events.  It  was  not  easy  for  Thucydides  to  do  so. 
Lists  of  archons,  or  other  official  personages,  were  used  in 
different  cities  of  Hellas  to  mark  the  time  of  past  events, 
and  Hellanicus  had  finally  catalogued  his  events  according 
to  Athenian  archons,  a  good  standard  certainly  throughout 
the  Athenian  Empire.     But,  Thucydides  objects  (v,  20,  2), 

1  F.  M.  Cornford,  Thucydides  Myihistoricus,  London,  1907. 


168  GREEK  LITERATURE 

"whether  an  event  occurred  in  the  beginning,  or  in  the  middle, 
or  whatever  might  be  the  exact  point,  of  a  magistrate's  term 
of  office,  is  left  uncertain  by  such  a  mode  of  reckoning." 
He  therefore  measured  time  by  summers  and  winters,  count- 
ing each  summer  and  winter  as  a  half-year,  and  established 
with  infinite  precision  his  initial  year  and  event.  In  the 
fifteenth  year  of  the  peace  which  was  concluded  after  the 
recovery  of  Euboea,  the  forty-eighth  year  of  Chrysis  the  high- 
priestess  of  Argos,  '^Aenesias  being  ephor  at  Sparta,  and  at 
Athens  Pythodorus  having  two  months  of  his  archonship  to 
run,  in  the  sixth  month  after  the  engagement  at  Potidaea, 
and  at  the  beginning  of  spring,  about  the  first  watch  of  the 
night  an  armed  force  of  Thebans  entered  Plataea,"  and  the 
war  was  on.  This  impresses  us  as  a  large  apparatus  for  small 
resultant  precision,  since  we  can  glibly  say  that  at  half-past 
four  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  the  12th  of  April,  1861  a.d., 
the  first  shot  of  our  Civil  War  was  fired.  But  since  Thu- 
cydides  had  devised  a  system  of  chronology  far  superior  to 
anything  in  use  before  him,  it  is  small  wonder  that  he  makes 
much  of  it,  and  so  becomes  wearisome  to  us  moderns,  espe- 
cially if  the  events  which  he  chronicles  seem  to  us,  as  many  of 
them  do,  trivial.  In  relation  to  his  theme,  the  behavior  of 
the  Athenian  Empire  under  stress  and  strain  of  war,  they 
can  rarely  be  called  trivial. 

Of  the  third  manner  of  Thucydides,  which  I  have  called 
the  episodic,  i.e.  the  manner  in  which  he  narrates  the  great 
episodes  of  the  war,  surely  little  need  be  said  here,  when  so 
good  a  judge  of  narrative  as  Macaulay  has  pronounced  his 
story  of  the  Sicilian  Expedition  the  "ne  plus  ultra  of  human 
art."  And  time  would  fail  to  speak  sufficiently  here  of  his 
digressions,  few  in  number,  always  logically  connected  with 
the  main  story,  and  always  peculiarly  telling  from  the  fact 
that  they  seem  a  condescension  on  the  part  of  one  whose  aim 
is  far  higher  than  merely  to  entertain.  In  Herodotus,  the 
entertaining  digression  rises  almost  to  the  dignity  of  a  main 


HISTORY  169 

object;  in  Thucydides,  it  is  a  rare  jewel  in  a  severe  setting. 
And  yet  how  graceful  and  fanciful  and  altogether  charming 
Thucydides  can  be,  in  spite  of  his  scorn  for  the  historical 
charmer,  is  to  be  seen  in  the  digression  which  depicts  the 
career  of  Themistocles  after  his  ostracism  (i,  135-138). 
Threading  his  way  through  the  maze  of  legend  which  had 
accumulated  about  the  figure  of  Themistocles  after  his  de- 
parture from  the  better  known  parts  of  Hellas,  Thucydides 
has  not  the  heart  to  eliminate  from  his  story  certain  most 
romantic  features,  and  shows  us  in  the  scene  at  the  palace 
of  Admetus,  King  of  the  Molossians,  an  ability  to  follow  and 
develop  Homeric  suggestions  fully  equal  to  that  of  Herod- 
otus.    It  is  like  a  smile  upon  a  stern  face  (AcW  eyeAao-ev 

ivravOa  i) . 

On  the  speeches  also  in  Thucydides  the  whole  time  now 
at  our  disposal  might  profitably  be  spent.^  A  purely  orna- 
mental literary  device  in  Homer  and  Herodotus  has  been 
lifted  by  him  into  a  means  for  securing  that  personal  detach- 
ment from  the  events  and  characters  of  his  story  which  is 
the  despair  of  all  who  come  after  him,  and  an  apparent  ob- 
jectivity of  presentation  which  is  seen  only  in  the  best  drama. 
These  speeches  range  all  the  way  from  the  brief  hortatory 
appeal  of  a  commander  to  his  soldiers  just  before  a  battle, 
through  the  lengthy  addresses  of  embassies  to  parliamentary 
assembhes,  up  to  the  matchless  speech  put  into  the  mouth 
of  Pericles  ostensibly  to  commemorate  the  citizens  of  Athens 
fallen  in  battle  during  an  uneventful  year  of  the  war,  but 
really  to  set  forth  the  historian's  broad  conception  of  the  im- 
perial democracy  of  Athens,  now  fallen,  and  of  the  high 
ideals  of  that  democracy's  first  ruler  and  guide.  "I  have 
put  into  the  mouth  of  each  speaker,"  says  Thucydides  (i, 
22,  1),  ''the  sentiments  proper  to  the  occasion,  expressed  as 

1  Scholiast  on  i,  126,  3. 

2R.  C.  Jebb,  "The  Speeches  of  Thucydides,"  in  Abbott's  Hellenica, 
Oxford,  1880. 


170  GREEK  LITERATURE 

I  thought  he  would  be  Hkely  to  express  them,  while  at  the 
same  time  I  endeavored,  as  nearly  as  I  could,  to  give  the 
general  purport  of  what  was  actually  said."  As  to  Professor 
Bury's  interesting  suggestion  that  the  speeches  composed 
in  his  more  obscure  manner  contain  more  of  what  Thucydides 
thought  was.  ''proper  to  the  occasion,"  and  those  com- 
posed in  his  simpler  manner  more  of  ''what  was  actually 
said,"  we  may  be  somewhat  skeptical.  And  summing  the 
matter  up,  we  may  say  that  in  Thucydides,  as  in  Herodotus, 
for  all  their  deficiencies,  there  are  certain  high  qualities,  and 
more  in  Thucydides  and  higher  than  in  Herodotus,  which 
have  never  been  surpassed  by  writers  of  history.  How 
potent  still  is  the  influence  of  Thucydides  may  be  clearly 
seen  by  those  who  know  him  in  the  pages  of  Mr.  Rhodes's 
great  and  now  standard  history  of  our  Civil  War. 

The  interrupted  task  of  Thucydides  was  completed  by 
Xenophon,  who  tried  to  follow  his  methods  and  continue  his 
spirit,  but  succeeded  with  only  a  faint  success.  The  modern 
historian  has  nothing  to  learn  from  Xenophon  that  his  master 
does  not  better  teach,  except,  perhaps,  in  the  matter  of 
biography.  The  words  of  Grote  are  familiar :  "It  is  at  this 
point  that  we  have  to  part  company  with  the  historian  Thu- 
cydides. .  .  .  The  full  extent  of  this  irreparable  loss  can 
hardly  be  conceived.  ...  To  pass  from  Thucydides  to  the 
Hellenica  of  Xenophon,  is  a  descent  truly  mournful;  and 
yet,  when  we  look  at  Grecian  history  as  a  whole,  we  have 
great  reason  to  rejoice  that  even  so  inferior  a  work  as  the 
latter  has  reached  us."  In  Xenophon's  completion  of  the 
history  of  the  Peloponnesian  War  we  welcome  the  method 
and  manner  of  Thucydides,  but  we  miss  his  discerning  power, 
and,  above  all,  his  detachment.  For  Xenophon  had  only 
a  mediocre  talent,  and  besides  was  a  partisan ;  a  partisan, 
too,  not  of  Athens,  his  native  city,  but  of  Sparta.  And  in 
his  continuation  of  Greek  history  down  to  362,  we  can  never 
forgive  him  the  distortion  of  view  which  elevates  so  unduly 


HISTORY  171 

the  personality  of  Agesilaus  .of  Sparta,  and  depreciates  so 
unduly,  almost  to  the  point  of  utter  neglect,  that  of  the 
Theban  Epaminondas,  whom  Cicero  called  ''princeps  Grae- 
corum."  It  is  not  too  harsh  a  judgment  to  call  Xenophon 
in  history,  as  in  philosophy,  an  agreeable  dilettante. 

Of  his  contemporary,  Cratippus,  whom  Plutarch  clearly 
regards  as  the  leading  historian  of  Greece  for  the  period  follow- 
ing the  point  at  which  Thucydides'swork  breaks  off,  we  know 
too  little  to  pass  any  broad  judgment  upon  him,  even  allowing, 
with  some  EngHsh  scholars,  that  a  considerable  historical 
fragment  discovered  at  Oxyrhynchus  in  Egypt  by  the  Messrs. 
Grenfell  and  Hunt  should  be  attributed  to  him  and  not  to 
Theopompus.  And  what  little  we  can  learn  about  Philistus 
of  Syracuse,  the  historian  of  Sicily  and  the  two  tyrants 
Dionysius,  leads  us  to  think  that  Cicero  was  apt  in  styling 
him  a  miniature  Thucydides. 

But  now,  with  the  disappearance  of  Epaminondas  from 
the  scene  of  his  triumphs,  with  the  rise  of  the  Macedonian 
power  to  political  supremacy  in  Greece,  and  with  the  remark- 
able intellectual  domination  of  all  Hellas  by  the  orator 
Isocrates,  a  new  political  idea  and  a  new  literary  form  be- 
came current,  and  forced  into  new  lines  the  art  of  writing 
history.  The  new  poUtical  idea  was  that  of  the  unity  of 
the  Greeks  against  Persia,  and  the  new  Hterary  form  was 
rhetorical  prose.  Historical  writing  became  more  widely 
national,  and  rhetorical  devices  ministered  to  the  pleasure 
of  hearers  and  readers  as  epic  poetry  or  epic  prose  narrative 
had  once  done.  When,  therefore,  Ephorus  of  Cyme  wrote 
his  Hellenica,  or  History  of  Greece,  though  he  had  a  large 
national  theme,  corresponding  well  to  the  imperial  theme  of 
Thucydides,  he  did  not  continue  the  line  of  historical  writers 
who,  like  Hellanicus  and  Thucydides,  were  devoted  to  fact 
more  than  to  form,  and  wrote  to  instruct  rather  than  to  please 
—  as  Hesiod  the  poet  had  done,  in  protest  against  Homer  — 
but  rather  the  line  which  culminated  in  Herodotus,   and 


172  GREEK  LITERATURE 

affected  the  Homeric  manner  and  charm.  The  manner  and 
the  charm  of  Ephorus  were  new,  but  they  were  his  main 
objects  in  writing.  ''The  form  was  of  more  importance  than 
the  substance,  and  freely  shaped  the  substance  to  its  needs." 
And,  in  true  Homeric  fashion,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  cater  to 
the  reigning  taste  by  the  embelhshment  or  even  the  inven- 
tion of  detail.  He  sacrificed  truth  to  rhetorical  effect.  And 
yet  he  achieved  an  immense  popularity,  and  established  what 
has  been  called  ''the  Vulgate  of  Greek  history."  One  might 
be  tempted  to  call  his  contemporary  and  rival,  Theopompus 
of  Chios,  the  Thucydides  of  this  rhetorical  period,  as  Ephorus 
was  its  Herodotus ;  but  in  Theopompus  also,  in  spite  of  his 
erudition  and  industrious  quest  of  the  truth,  especially  in 
his  huge  chronicle  of  contemporary  history,  the  Philippica, 
the  rhetorical  element  triumphs  over  the  didactic,  and  besides, 
a  certain  bigotry  and  bitterness  of  partisanship,  together  with 
a  pessimistic  skepticism  and  an  undiscriminating  censorious- 
ness,  combine  to  make  him  rather  a  soured  and  crabbed 
Herodotus,  if  that  is  conceivable,  than  a  later  Thucydi- 
des. From  a  historiography  which  is  the  slave  of  formal 
rhetoric,  the  modern  historian  has  nothing  to  learn  except 
how  not  to  write  history,  and  his  regret  that  Ephorus  and 
Theopompus  are  known  principally  in  the  citations  of  later 
compilers  is  tempered  by  the  remembrance  of  the  kind 
fortune  which  has  brought  Herodotus,  Thucydides,  and 
Xenophon  down  to  him  in  their  entirety. 

But  while  Ephorus  and  Theopompus  were  yet  writing,  a  new 
personage  had  entered  the  ancient  w^orld,  who,  in  an  amaz- 
ingly short  time,  completely  transformed  it.  Alexander, 
the  son  of  Philip  of  Macedon,  in  a  meteoric  career  of  less  than 
twenty  years,  surpassed  in  actual  and  palpable  achievements 
all  that  the  glowing  imaginations  of  poets  and  prose  romancers 
had  devised  for  men  to  admire  and  wonder  at.  Once  more, 
as  in  the  sixth  and  fifth  centuries,  history  became  stranger 
and  more  fascinating  than  romance  had  been,  and  led  the 


HISTORY  173 

way  to  still  bolder  flights  of  fancy  in  a  new  romance.  The 
wonders  of  India  and  the  extreme  East  now  eclipsed  what 
had  once  been  wonderful  in  Persia  and  the  nearer  East,  as 
that  had  eclipsed  the  wonders  of  the  heroic  age,  and  Greek 
fancy  grew  by  what  it  fed  upon.  On  Alexander  himself  the 
marvellous  in  his  career  seems  to  have  produced  some  spell, 
nor  was  it  wholly  from  poHtical  reasons  that  he  came  to  think 
himself,  and  to  wish  others  to  think  him,  a  god.  On  the 
smaller  spirits  in  his  retinue  the  marvellous  in  their  experience 
produced  the  effect  of  an  apparent  incapacity  to  state  a 
common  fact  as  such.  There  were  sober  heads  among  them, 
it  is  true  —  a  Callisthenes,  an  Aristobulus,  a  Ptolemy,  a 
Nearchus,  and  from  them  we  know  the  truth  about  Alex- 
ander's campaigns,  but  only  because  the  Graeco-Roman 
Arrian,  four  centuries  later,  recurred  to  their  testimonies. 
Their  contemporaries  would  none  of  them,  but  preferred  the 
extravagant  exaggerations  of  Onesicritus,  or  the  wilder 
flights  of  fancy  which  marked  the  current  and  popular  oral 
tradition.  For  Alexander  was  accompanied  from  the  first  by 
a  travelling  literary  court  of  poets,  philosophers,  and  historians, 
and  each  of  the  momentous  steps  in  his  progress  was  cele- 
brated by  athletic  and  literary  festivals  to  which  the  greatest 
artists  of  Greece  were  summoned.  His  frequent  exchange  of 
worn-out  soldiers  for  fresher  and  younger  ones  also  kept  up 
a  constant  line  of  oral  communication  between  his  deeds  and 
the  riotous  fancy  of  the  stay-at-homes.  But  so  rapid  and 
dazzling  were  his  achievements  that  contemporary  imagina- 
tion could  not  keep  pace  with  them.  Especially  after  the 
conqueror  had  vanished  wholly  from  the  view  of  the  Hellenic 
world  during  the  three  years  of  his  Indian  expedition  did  the 
Hellenic  imagination  revel  in  the  historical  and  mythological 
possibilities  of  the  case.  Heracles  and  Dionysus  were  not 
only  imitated,  but  outdone,  by  this  new  god  of  conquest. 
Moreover,  the  mental  energies  of  the  Ionian  Hellenes,  de- 
flected from  political  life  by  the  Macedonian  supremacy, 


174  GREEK  LITERATURE 

found  vent  more  than  ever  in  literary  expression.  Old  forms 
of  expression  were  cultivated  into  decadence,  and  new  forms 
were  devised.  The  literature  of  pure  romance  began. 
There  was,  however,  no  such  recognized  channel,  as  yet,  for 
the  flow  of  pure  fancy  and  invention  in  prose  as  was  afforded 
later  by  professedly  fictitious  narrative  —  the  romance  and 
the  novel.  These  were  yet  to  be  set  apart  as  distinct  forms 
of  literary  art.  Fancy  and  invention  therefore  found  play 
in  the  realm  of  what  should  have  been  historical  narrative. 
And  so  it  came  to  pass  that  before  Alexander  had  been  dead 
thirty  years,  a  mass  of  legend  and  romance  had  grown  up 
around  the  main  authenticated  facts  of  his  career.  This 
mass  has  been  varied  in  its  rhetorical  treatment  rather 
than  sensibly  increased  by  the  romantic  invention  which  has 
ever  since  been  busy  with  that  career,  down  through  the 
middle  ages,  and  into  the  times  of  our  Old  English  literature. 
This  romantic  version  of  Alexander's  career,  with  its  firm 
basis  of  authenticated  facts  and  its  luxuriant  envelope  of 
legend  and  fictitious  anecdote,  vague  with  all  the  vagueness 
of  popular  tradition,  found  its  Herodotus  in  Cleitarchus  of 
Colophon,  a  contemporary,  but  not  a  companion,  of  Alexander. 
He  was  the  son  of  Deinon  of  Colophon,  who  was  an  imagina- 
tive historian  of  eastern  realms,  and  a  pupil  of  Stilpo  of  Meg- 
ara,  a  rhetorician  and  philosopher  celebrated  above  all  for 
grace  and  cleverness  of  literary  style.  His  history  of  Alexan- 
der, highly  rhetorical,  and  full  of  the  wildest  flights  of  fancy, 
became  the  standard,  as  the  history  of  Greece  down  to  Alex- 
ander by  Ephorus  was  standard.  It  forestalled  the  sober 
testimonies  of  the  four  sober  companions  of  Alexander  to 
whom  Arrian,  four  centuries  later,  led  the  world  back,  for, 
at  the  time,  it  met  the  world's  demands.  We  know  Clei- 
tarchus chiefly  through  late  Roman  compilers  like  Diodorus 
Siculus,  Justin,  and  Quintus  Curtius,  but  we  understand 
perfectly  why  the  author  of  the  treatise  *'0n  the  Sublime" 
calls  him  empty  and  bombastic,  and  why  even  Plutarch  dis- 


HISTORY  175 

credits  him.  ^'  At  this  time,"  says  Plutarch  {Alexander,  xlvi), 
"most  writers  say  that  the  Queen  of  the  Amazons  paid  a  visit 
to  Alexander,  of  whom  are  Cleitarchus  and  Onesicritus. 
But  Ptolemy  and  Aristobulus  say  that  this  is  fiction."  Clei- 
tarchus therefore  followed  Onesicritus  in  preference  to  Ptol- 
emy and  Aristobulus,  and  of  Onesicritus,  thanks  to  Lucian, 
we  can  form  a  sure  estimate. 

Just  after  the  great  Indian  campaign  against  Porus  and 
his  elephants,  and  while  Alexander  and  his  army  were  de- 
scending the  Hydaspes  in  their  extemporized  flotilla,  a  certain 
historian,  so  Lucian  tells  us  {Quom.  hist,  scrib.,  xii),  bent  on 
flattery,  read  aloud  to  Alexander  what  he  had  written  about 
a  fierce  duel  between  Alexander  in  person  and  the  gigantic 
Porus  mounted  on  an  elephant.  Now  we  have  in  Arrian 
what  is  substantially  Ptolemy's  account  of  the  battle  with 
Porus,  and  there  neither  was  nor  could  have  been  at  any  time 
during  the  battle  a  duel  between  Porus  and  Alexander.  But 
just  as  at  Issus  and  Arbela  romantic  historians  insist,  against 
all  the  facts,  on  bringing  Darius  and  Alexander  into  personal 
combat,  so  in  the  struggle  with  Porus  the  flattering  his- 
torian thought  that  the  two  leaders  must  have  their  Homeric 
duel.  Here  we  can  put  our  finger  on  Alexander-romance 
in  the  very  making.  As  the  historian  read  aloud  to  Alexan- 
der, thinking  to  gratify  the  king  by  inventing  the  most 
fabulous  exploits  for  him,  Alexander  caught  away  the  writ- 
ing from  him  and  hurled  it  into  the  river,  saying,  "I  ought 
to  do  the  same  to  you,  my  man,  for  fighting  such  a  duel  and 
kilHng  such  elephants  for  me  with  a  single  javelin."  This 
historian,  as  we  learn  from  another  passage  in  the  same  work 
of  Lucian  (chap,  xl),  was  Onesicritus,  the  Munchausen  of 
Alexander's  companions.  And  it  is  in  all  probabihty  his 
version  of  the  visit  of  the  Amazonian  queen  to  Alexander 
which  Arrian  mentions  as  ''reported"  (vii.  13,  3),  only  to 
remark :  ''but  this  is  recorded  neither  by  Ptolemy  nor  Aris- 
tobulus, nor  by  any  one  else  capable  of  testimony  in  such 


176  GREEK  LITERATURE 

matters.  And  personally,  I  do  not  believe  that  the  race  of 
Amazons  was  surviving  at  that  time,  nor  before  Alexander's 
time  either,  or  Xenophon  would  have  mentioned  them." 
This  reputed  visit  of  the  queen  of  the  Amazons  to  Alexander 
may  serve  as  a  fair  specimen  of  the  countless  bold  inventions 
which  the  history  of  Cleitarchus  adopted. 

With  Cleitarchus  and  his  history  of  Alexander,  which 
was  for  a  long  time  canonical,  we  may  well  close  this  brief 
survey  of  Greek  historiography.  In  the  century  after 
Alexander,  Duris  of  Samos  was  led  to  write  a  history  of  Greece 
in  which,  judging  from  the  fragments  of  it  which  have  come 
down  to  us,  startling  effects  were  sought  and  gained  by  resort 
to  coarse  and  realistic  sensationalism,  a  new  manifestation 
of  the  Homeric  and  Herodotean  desire  to  please  rather  than 
to  instruct,  but  not  one  which  became  dominant.  With 
Timaeus  of  Tauromenium  and  with  Polybiusthe  Roman  spirit 
manifests  itself,  and  historiography  ceases  to  be  distinctively 
Hellenic.  ''Distinctively  Greek  historiography,''  to  repeat 
from  the  opening  paragraph  of  the  lecture,  ''may  be  said 
to  end  with  the  historians  of  Alexander's  career.  And  it 
ends,  as  it  begins,  with  a  triumph  of  fancy  and  invention  over 
fact  and  re-presentation.  In  the  middle  ground,  in  Thucyd- 
ides  and  Xenophon,  the  desire  to  inform  is  duly  enthroned 
beside  the  desire  to  please ;  but  the  Greek  hearer  or  reader 
usually  preferred  a  flight  of  the  imagination  to  a  statement  of 
the  truth  ;  and  the  sovereign  names  among  the  Greeks  them- 
selves were  Homer,  Herodotus,  Ephorus,  and  Cleitarchus, 
names  representing  a  body  of  highly  imaginative  and  mainly 
fictitious  poetry,  and  a  body  of  highly  imaginative  and  largely 
fictitious  prose."  And  our  survey  has  itself  made  plain, 
without  further  definition,  the  permanent  value  of  this  body 
of  historical  literature.  It  has  such  value  if  it  does  no  more 
than  illustrate,  by  two  splendid  specimens  in  the  works  of 
Herodotus  and  Thucydides,  artistic  success  in  writing  history 
that  charms,   and  artistic  success  in  writing  history  that 


HISTORY  177 

edifies.  Imagination  a  good  historian  must  always  have, 
creative  imagination  even,  especially  in  the  problems  of 
psychological  reconstruction,  wherein  the  best  modern  his- 
torians make  most  advance  upon  Thucydides ;  and  rhetori- 
cal skill  a  good  historian  must  have,  in  order  to  win  readers 
for  the  truths  which  he  has  laboriously  ehcited  from  complex 
testimonies.  But  the  imagination  must  not  become  in- 
ventive purely,  nor  must  the  inventions  of  imagination  or 
the  attractions  of  rhetoric  ever  become  the  main  object  of 
the  historian.  How  easy  to  illustrate  from  the  works  of 
modern  historians  with  which  we  are  all  familiar !  How 
easy,  also,  to  follow  Professor  Bury  when  he  says,  ''Within 
the  limits  of  the  task  he  attempted  Thucydides  was  a  master 
in  the  craft  of  investigating  contemporary  events,  and  it  may 
be  doubted  whether,  within  those  limits,  the  nineteenth 
century  would  have  much  to  teach  him." 

B.  Perrin. 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 

AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL   BE  ASSESSED    FOR    FAILURE  TO    RETURN 
THIS    BOOK   ON    THE   DATE   DUE.    THE   PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  50  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY    AND     TO     $1.00     ON     THE     SEVENTH     DAY 
OVERDUE. 

;UPi        \        ■      \'X'k) 

>-""■- 

X\\^     1 

1 

^'■•6 17  mm 

, .« 4 

HfW  «8  '^^"" 

1 

K«EC-D  LD   ;; . 

1  k  '66  -5  PM 

LD  21-100m-8,'34     1 

;i 


